Saloons are essential for working men. Saloons are THE place to socialize away from work and home. It’s a place where immigrants can find people from the old country and connect to old rituals. Your bartender was your priest, your therapist, your law and order, your banker, your translator, your politician (that comes up later) and more. Your saloon is where all social events, and voting, and meetings go on.

As much as the saloons seemed like local places…they were all owned and licensed out by a handful of German breweries. Franchises owned by…let’s remember… GERMANS. RECENT IMMIGRANTS. THAT ALWAYS GOES WELL IN AMERICA

Saloons get more powerful and the saloon districts become dense, easy to spot, crime ridden area of major cities. It’s hard to make these areas safe because more and more saloon owners are also tied to (or are) local politicians.

Now drunkenness isn’t considered just a home issue, it’s also a city safety issue, and people are more and more aware that the politicians are involved. Well, in the country it’s still mostly an a home issue…Prohibition marks a huge divide in city vs country life and voting.

AWWW SHIT it’s Carrie Nation.

Carrie Nation has a sad history and it ends sad…but it’s also undeniably fun. I dunno if this is gonna be peak White Feminist time but it is Privilege Playhouse time.

Carrie Nation had tried peaceful marches and letters. Then GOD spoke to her.

Let’s stop a moment to appreciate that white-female, middle-to-upperclass, protestant, widowed, privilege plays a HUGE part in what is about to go down with Carrie. She’s gonna do stuff that any one of lesser social status, background, or race couldn’t. I used to think “The BALLS on that crazy woman.” I wasn’t being that unfair with crazy, Carrie was probably plagued with mental illness, her mother and daughter were, but her balls came from what I now believe to be a firm understanding of the ways she was untouchable.

Carrie Nation gathered rocks and bottles, wrapped them in paper so they wouldn’t look suspicious, walked into a saloon and said “Get outa the way, I don’t wanna strike you but imma break up this den of vice.” and then she started SMASHING SHIT. Windows. Mirrors. Bottles. She moved on and smashed MORE saloons.

She dared the sheriff to arrest her, he did not.

SEE?!?!

She commences to smashing MORE places. She gets arrested. It doesn’t stop. She sasses at people from behind bars. She gets out. She gets a hatchet (which becomes her symbol from then on) to smash more. Jailed and released. She travels and smashes more. She makes headlines all over the country.

“I tell you ladies, you don’t know how much joy you’ll have until you smash, smash, smash.” -Carrie

See?!?! That’s the fun. She’s FUCKING shit up. But it’s also her privilege which is getting people to step aside when she swings and let her out when she gets arrested. Of course people are scared of her but they’re also scared of what happens if they DO anything about her. The documentary doesn’t SAY that but what else could it be? She’s a land owning woman who ran a hotel and now she has a fucking hatchet and she keeps GETTING the chance to SMASH.

A governor implores her to stop and he tells her to know her womanly place. THAT DON’T WORK VERY WELL. That doesn’t work now, it didn’t work them. STOP IT.

She makes ALL the news, is a huge success (mostly with women) and probably gets some songs written about her. She gets an army of supporter and hits more places and a warehouse. SMASH SMASH SMASH. Jailed and released four times in a day.

SMASH SMASH SMASH. Legislation is made to slow HER down.

Eventually she and her movement does slow. Her momentum could not be replicated and it probably shouldn’t have been either…but it was a fun SMASH SMASH SMASH ride. She ends up a punchline in Vaudeville…only occasionally literally smashing things. Saloons keep an eye out for her.

Baptists, Methodists and Protestants join together in this one. We’ve got a group of religious men focused on getting rid of alcohol. No side politics. No trying to improve women’s lives in other ways. No other interests. . They are organised and want political retribution. They make alcohol a wedge issue. NOTHING ELSE.

Wayne Bidwell Wheeler(whose full name I use because CHECK OUT that middle name) was the driving force behind the Anti-Saloon league. He understood that he just needed to get a slim majority to change everything. He didn’t care about the middle ground. He fed off being divisive.This overshadowed all the temperance movements connected to suffragettes.Oh NO! More immigrants come as America becomes an industrial powerhouse…and immigrants fill overcrowded slums.And so the Anti-Saloon league gets all fucking BENEVOLENT. Alcohol in the Temperance movement has always been blamed for jobs lost, life savings swallowed up, women being beaten up (and later city crime).  Prior to this point there wasn’t huge a class/lifestyle/religious difference between those who were joining the movement and those who were supposed to “be protected” by the movement.Now there’s a huge religious, ethnic, class gap. The Anti-Saloon League (and other temperance groups) start feeling like what they are doing to help immigrants and the working class. They don’t they ask the immigrants and working class what they want for a better life. No surprises here.The immigrants, including Irish, Catholic, Jewish, Asian (we see one photo of an Asian classroom) don’t WANT their alcohol taking away. The Anti-Saloon League does not care. They feel that they are protecting the immigrants from themselves and protecting everyone from the saloons/immigrants.

(sigh)

He also became one of the leaders of the “Wet” movement, for obvious reasons. He had presidental ties, he knew saloons and alcohol make the government money (remember in the Civil War when we started taxing alcohol? That’s a huge part of how the government is still getting by) ….Still, It’s kinda hard to take the moral ground with “we want to drink” and “I’d like to keep making good money.”  vs the passions and tales of woe from the “Dry” warriors.

Things were at a stalemate. Counties and states went dry, or didn’t, loop-holes were always found. A nation wide dry spell? UNPOSSIBLE. The Government Needs The Money.

16th Amendment: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

FUCK! Watchout! Gamechanger! 16th amendment passes. We have income taxes! The government was no longer dependent on alcohol taxes. DAMN. And the Anti-Saloon League HELPED make that amendment happen.The Anti_Saloon league had helped get one amendment through, now they wanted THEIR amendment. WCTU and the Anti-Saloon league join together. No longer was prohibition a state or county issue… THEY going NATION WIDE.